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Hi. I'm Barbara Swafford and I'd like to welcome you to Blogging Without A Blog. Grab a seat, share your thoughts and join in the conversation.

P.S. The greatest value of this blog lies in the comment section where bloggers in all phases of the blogging journey open up and share their thoughts. Click on the post title to experience the full effect of each lesson.

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How much time should you expect to spend writing for your blog? That depends on what you’re blogging about, and if you’re writing your own content.

If you write a sentence or two, and then reference an article in another blog, or on another site, you could publish a post in less than five minutes. However, if you’re having to do extensive research for an article, and/or obtain links and/or stats, it could take a day or more.

I just wrote an article for my OM blog, How To Have A Successful Garage Sale, and spent over three hours. I had my topic chosen a few days ago, and the information I used, was based on the garage sale I had several weeks ago. I typed a rough draft and continued to edit the article, until I was satisfied with the result. My thought, as I was writing, remained, “is this information valuable to my readers”?

If you’re a newbie blogger and are trying to determine how much time to allow for posting to your blog, you’ll first have to consider your writing style. Can you post directly from “head to hand” (type the words as you think of them), do a quick edit and “publish”. Or, do you need to first write a “rough draft”, step away from it, continue editing, and then “publish”?

Secondly, you’ll need to determine how much knowledge you have about, what you’re blogging about. Is this knowledge in your head, in notebooks, in your computer; or will you have to do additional research?

When reading some of my favorite “problogs” (see Lorelle, Darren, and Steve, in my blogroll), it’s obvious, these authors have spent a considerable amount of time preparing most of the articles they’ve published. These probloggers are very well versed in their fields of expertise. Some of the articles are thousands of words long, and some are filled with links and/or stats to substantiate what they wrote. Definitely not, five minute posts.

Lastly, the time needed to blog will depend on what your long term goal for blogging is. Do you want a blog that just directs readers to other links, and/or hopefully gets readers to click on your ads? Or, do you want a blog which includes valuable information which will stand the test of time?

The choice is yours.

In case you’re wondering, I’ve been working on this post for the over two hours. Because I have a full time job (in our home office), I’ve also been dealing with interruptions that took me away from blogging. This is a typical day for me.

Hint: One way I save time in blogging is to use the Firefox Split Browser. It’s great for grabbing links. See my previous post; Blogging Just Got Easier

I spend a few hours a week working on blog posts, and always have a fresh crop coming up (in development0, others ready to harvest (post)

I would rather take the time to explore an idea to my own satisfaction before offering it to others. That said, I also have a personal guide, “Don’t let the perfect become the enemy of the good,” which I use to counter my perfectionist writing tendencies.